COMMENT: Scotland fans will begin to switch off after spending top dollar for such second-rate fare
Walking around Murrayfield yesterday in the couple of hours before kick-off, nothing felt especially out of the ordinary.
The bagpipes were playing as supporters mingled around the stadium. The fan-zones were busy with all sorts of music and entertainment on offer.
The food and drink stalls were queued by the dozen. A pre-match pint and a burger wouldn’t have left you with much change from a tenner. Ref mics were available for £8.
All par for the course at a Scotland rugby match. Had anyone turned up none the wiser, they could easily have been forgiven for thinking that a Six Nations blockbuster was about to take place.
But this wasn’t the Six Nations. It wasn’t even anything remotely close. With Scotland ticking along at a point a minute at one stage, it wasn’t even really a proper Test match.
The fact that the stadium wasn’t far off a sell-out was actually quite incredible — and it belied the one-sided nature of what was on display on the field.
Fans enjoy Scotland’s win over Portugal that was a mismatch at Murrayfield
Darcy Graham skips past a Portuguese defender as the wing-back enjoys a field day
Josh Bayliss scores in Scotland’s emphatic rout of Portugal in Edinburgh
You couldn’t help but question the wisdom of a fixture like this in a week which saw the SRU post a loss of £11.3million in their latest annual accounts.
Crowds of over 60,000 for games like this won’t go on for ever. Especially when fans are being charged £50 a pop for such second-rate fare.
The cheapest tickets were priced around £25, while most others were in the £40-£55 bracket. It’s not necessarily pricing that was the issue, but the choice of opponent.
Had Scotland been playing the likes of a Japan for instance, the game would have been a sell-out with ticket prices well in excess of what was on offer yesterday.
In essence, a proper fixture against a proper team would have allowed the SRU to make a good deal more money.
This stuff matters for the SRU right now. They didn’t have any Autumn Tests last year due to the World Cup and only had two home games in this year’s Six Nations.
Over these past two years, there’s been a combined loss of over £20m in their accounts. By anyone’s standards, that’s a hell of a black hole.
The line from the SRU about why they were actually facing Portugal — a team ranked 15th in the world — has been that limited options were available.
Scotland skipper for the day Stafford McDowall coasts in for an early try
Maybe so. But that does nothing to help plug the financial shortfall — and it also does nothing in terms of the development of Gregor Townsend’s team.
They will have learned nothing from this. Anyone who believes any of these players will have advanced their cause to play in next year’s Six Nations on the basis of this performance really needs to give their head a wobble.
Sport relies on jeopardy. At its best, it enthrals us with its drama. This game had none of that.
It was a glorified training exercise. Scotland’s defence was too porous at times for this to be considered a resounding success. They did what was expected of them, nothing more.
But these did fixtures simply cannot go on. Both from a financial and a competitive point of view, Scotland need to be doing better than this.
Fans will eventually switch off if they are asked to fork out good money to watch Scotland run up a cricket score against second-rate opposition.
